At least he didn't hit me...

 ...until he did.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, and I have tried different methods to raise awareness the past on social media with very little response or none at all; are folks generally not interested or is it simply the algorithm of social media interfering with my efforts? This is the first time I have written about it in my blog; probably it will have the same outcome but if my story is here, perhaps someday someone who needs it will happen upon it. This is a topic close to my heart for personal reasons, which I will talk a little about, but first some statistics.

According to Domestic Violence Hotline, in the US:

• About 24 people a minute are victims of abuse from an intimate partner. 
• 29% of women and 10% of men are victims of domestic violence, and about half of those have been injured physically, most of them seriously.
• About 50% of both men and women have experienced "psychological aggression" in an intimate relationship.

Reasons victims fail to reach out for help: 

• Fear of being able to make it on their own or fear of retaliation from the abusers. After experiencing years or decades of terror, fear is not easily overcome.
• No one has believed them in the past, or the abusers have isolated them so much from friends and family that there is no one they can trust. Few people know what is really going on, and often those around them believe the abuser is a wonderful person.
• They have no self confidence and have been mentally beaten down to think that they can't really leave nor that they are worth it. Emotional turmoil, self-loathing, belief it is their fault and brain fog hinders their decision to take action.
• The lingering hope that things will change and the violence will just stop. 

All this information is true because I have lived through this myself. I don't plan to drag the reader through the hell of my experiences nor do I want to relive them in the telling. But I hope I can share enough to impress on those who are listening the seriousness of this subject.

I had a mentor once who told me that we "teach people how to treat us." I can see how this played out in my life, except for my childhood where I was powerless to teach anyone anything, however I learned a great deal, including that my worth was dependent on how good I could be, then told how bad I actually was.  I am not a professional but it seems to me now that my controlling rage-oholic mother suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness, and my dear sweet daddy went off to work every day leaving 5 little kids in her care. I don't think he knew exactly what went on when he was gone, because none of us dared to say anything to even him but surely he had a vague idea that she was unstable; denial is a powerful force in these families. Physical abuse was not our mom's thing but she was very clever with verbal, emotional and even psychological abuse. I remember, when I was about 16, wishing that she would just hit me so I had evidence of what she was doing. Otherwise I had no way to process my childhood experiences; no way to explain suffering. At this point I would like to say after years of recovery I came to terms with my mother and understood that she didn't withhold love from me--she was too broken to give it. It was not my fault; she would have been that way if I had never been born.  By her end of life, I was at peace with her. But this revelation didn't come in time to prevent the dysfunctions in my adult life.

I left home and soon got married. I jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Running my life based on unhealed damage of my upbringing, set me up for teaching others to treat me the way my mom did.  I operated under the illusion that if I was good enough, worked hard enough, pleased others enough, could lose enough weight, and tamp down my needs and personality, that I would be treated with love and kindness in return.  I am here to tell you that strategy did not work and lead me into a toxic, volatile relationship with my husband, increasingly exacerbated by his alcoholism. While he became mean, controlling and verbally abusive, at least it wasn't physical.. until one night after 17 years marriage, it was. I got up the next morning and went to work and told no one. After that I managed to dodge trouble for 5 months, knowing in my heart that it would happen again--terrified that it would and still scared to take action. When it became more and more obvious that we were heading for a disaster, I followed the advice of a friend and called the number she gave me and made arrangements to go to a safe house. And asked someone to give me a ride when Hub was out of town for the night. IT WAS THE HARDEST THING I EVER DID! I was terrified, my self-esteem was in the sewer, and I didn't think I had the right to do that.  I prayed for days begging that I would stick to my decision and not give in.

My four month stay in the shelter was transformative. I learned strategies to avoid conflict and how to get away if there was trouble. When I returned home, I communicated to him abuse was unacceptable, and felt stronger in my faith, and in my confidence that I could take safe action when I needed to, even while was shaking in my boots.  He sobered up 5 years later; during that time I left temporarily 3 times when I thought it was unsafe. When he entered into recovery he told anyone who would listen, that by leaving when I did, we stopped the downward spiral of abuse in our life.  I still had lot of learning to do. I am grateful to God that our story didn't end in tragedy, but many stories do.

My prayer, while I write this, is that it will help someone take tiny steps towards freedom.

Where to find help if you are experiencing abuse or violence of any kind.:

Locally, if there is not an actual safe house, you can find help or information from your medical team, hospital, the health department, the local Community Action agency, and even local law enforcement. Or you can contact national hotlines.:

• 1.800.799.SAFE; 
• TEXT "START" TO 88788
• Online help: https://www.thehotline.org/ where you can chat with a live advocate.

For those who fear that their loved ones are involved in dangerous situations, I can share thoughts on that also--what the warning signs are and what, if anything you can do, but it will be in another post; meanwhile you can reach information at the contacts above. 

God bless everyone.

Maxie

Avoid the Alphabet News

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.  David Brinkley

I started out as a television news anchor but I wasn't very good at it. I think I was too positive. I wanted to begin every newscast by saying, 'Good evening, in the news tonight...everything's great! Go to sleep. We'll let you know if anything important comes up.'  Bob Burg

I say prayers of thanks for the fact that I have reached this great age with fairly good health and a mind still intact. I can still think, reason and remember.

I remember the ways things were--I'm just not referring to the nostalgic musings about a childhood lifestyle that we see on social media, but things like real history playing out in the living room on the evening news. TV news, a new medium when I was a kid, was serious business and not to be missed; dinner time was planned around it and adults didn't go to bed without watching the nightly broadcast.  News was presented in an impartial responsible way and TV anchormen such as Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite, were almost deadpan in their delivery, not wanting to influence viewers even with their expressions.  Information was delivered in the similar format as newspapers:  News, Editorial, and Commentary and never should the three be mixed. 

As time went on, the news sets became more appealing, the newscasters more personable, and we liked how the new was presented to us and we trusted it.  But by the 1980's I began to notice the television news axis begin to subtly shift away from its original standards. Not only the national news but the local news as well. Twice, in two different states, I was aware of difficult neighborhood issues. When the local news stations reported the conflicts, they used creative video images, and clever dialogue editing to present a story that wasn't even close to the truth. I remember a stunned neighbor, who had been interviewed, saying, "But that's not what I said!" This was a profound letdown. I continued to watch the news on a national level but I didn't trust it anymore, but my interest in local news diminished.

By the 2000's, it appeared to me, that the main stream media axis was so tilted, the sphere was about to spin off into space... or maybe it already had.  I watched FOX news for awhile and it was better, but I eventually stopped watching it all. Mistrust of the news sources and emotional overload from the 24 hour news cycle of terrorism, shootings and disasters brought me to a point where I stopped watching. I had reached a saturation point. I was going through some other stuff in my life and just didn't need the stress. I don't even have cable anymore. I've streamed TV for years and I am vigilant about what I let into my living room. I get the news the old fashioned way, by reading it--online or in an occasional newspaper. I don't even need headlines; all I have to see is "thoughts and prayers" posts on social media and I go look it up.  That's worked for me for a long time.

Eventually, I became more interested in the news again and started exploring alternate news streams. Mainstream media is everywhere, even on YouTube, but I generally ignore them, digging deeper --even into underground news. 

What has brought me to telling this story in my blog are the events of the past few months. While I was watching coverage on the disastrous floods in Texas, I came across a video reporting the President's visit to the area and I wanted to see what he had to say. The newswoman played a very bad soundbite of his speech and then... heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes and made a derogatory comment. This is far from the way news reporting should be. I looked where video came from and it was  CN & the other N. Oh yeah. It was them. 

And then there's the news of the Charlotte NC murder of Iryna Zararutska, a young Ukrainian woman, by Decarlos Brown, a black man; this news was severely under-reported. The story actually appears to have been suppressed, it didn't reach the rest of the country for two weeks. Why would the powers that be do that?  Were they afraid of a reverse Ferguson effect? Riots and city burnings? Or were the authorities embarrassed that they missed 14 opportunities to get a dangerous man off the streets? The under-reporting of the death did an injustice to Iryna's family and loved ones, and simply added another reason not to trust the media.

And finally, we come to the murder of Charlie Kirk.  It seems mainstream media personalities have been removed from the air, at least for a minute, for their negative comments soon after his death. I can see where they thought that as unfair, because they have always had carte blanche to speak ill of anyone they wanted without consequence.  However, traditionally in the news industry, one didn't speak evil of the deceased until after the funeral, while respecting the grieving family and followers of the departed. Perhaps that item should be included in the employee contracts.

TV news will never be the same, and I am not the same either. I want to be informed but I no longer take things at face value any more; I don't want to keep them buried inside until I melt down, either. I am  a skeptic and I intend to dig for the truth, while keeping a sane balance of news intake in my life.  However, I am done with CN & the other N, and all the other alphabet channels; I believe their outlook is biased--the thing that the pioneers of television news didn't want--for good reason--it's detrimental to all of us.

If you made it this far, thank you. If you disagree, I hope it is respectful; there is a big hole in our society needs to be filled with love and kindness. Maxie

Tred carefully, ignoring the paper tigers, but keeping your eye out for the sleeping dragon.

 "Paper Tiger-one that is outwardly powerful or dangerous but inwardly weak or ineffectual."  Wshakes  

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

In my younger life certain people had a great deal of power over me.  I feared them and, in an attempt to placate them, I believed their deceptions, worked to please them and complied to their demands.  I have since learned that their power over me was an illusion. I was the one who was giving them permission to control me.  They were only paper tigers--fragile and easy to shred; I had the power to break free from the tails of the tigers I had been tightly gripping. I had to face my fear. Doing that was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but I am free of them today.

However, these tigers can be dangerous if we fail to break free from them.  They may even lead to death.

The ideologies we attach ourselves to can be paper tigers, also. We become entrenched in our dogma or opinions drenching with them anger and fear; they become our obsession, blinding us to the truth. These tigers have no more power than what we give them but sadly they can also lead to destruction. They can make a person into an assassin.  

There are legends of sleeping giants in folklore and it is a term often used for volcanoes. Giants dozing in our society, when rudely awakened by attacks, assassinations, and catastrophes, account for drastic changes and unforgettable historic events we have witnessed or read about in history. 

I wonder what the results will be of the Sleeping Giant that was awakened on September 10, 2025. 

"Here Kitty Kitty"  8 x 10 Colored Pencil Reference from Pixabay